Simple Narrative Conflict or Task Resolution System

[mjbauer]

I was listening to Paul Tevis's interview with Joshua Bishop Roby on Have Games will Travel episode #90 and they talked a bit about narrative games and it inspired a really simple but interesting Conflict/Task Resolution mechanic. It's so simple that it must have been done before (maybe I'm just remembering it). But, in either case, Here it is:

Initiator	Opposition	Narrative Control	Result
Succeed	Fail	Initiator	Yes and...
Succeed	Succeed	Opposition	Yes but,
Fail	Fail	Initiator	No but,
Fail	Succeed	Opposition	No and...

Basically if the Initiator of an action or conflict makes a successful roll they get a "Yes," meaning that the action they are attempting or conflict that they are involved in ends favorably for them. If they make an unsuccessful roll then the get a "No" meaning that they were unsuccessful in their attempt. If the Opposition makes a successful roll they get to add a complication to the Initiator's success. If the Opposition fails then the Initiator can add a benefit to their failed attempt.


Here is an Example:

    Initiator: I'm going to leap from my horse to yours.
    Opposition: I'm not going to let you.

    *Initiator rolls success*
    *Opposition rolls success*

    Opposition: You successfully make the leap to my horse, BUT when you land you bobble and drop your sword.

If the Opposition makes an unsuccessful roll then that adds a bonus to the Initiator. So if the Opposition was unsuccessful in the example above the Initiator could say:

    Initiator: I successfully leap from my horse to yours AND upon landing your horse stumbles and in an attempt to stay on you drop your scimitar.

This goes for the Initiator's failure as well. If the initiator was unsuccessful in the example above and the Opposition was successful the Opposition could say:

    Opposition: You miss my horse AND as you fall a hoof kicks you squarely in the head, knocking you unconscious.

If both fail, then the narration goes to the Initiator who could say something like:

    Initiator: I leap toward you and your quick reaction veers the horse out of my reach BUT I do manage to tear the map from your belt as I tumble to the ground.


This is all completely based on Paul Tevis's discussion of improv from the episode. This seems eerily familiar, so, like I said, I wouldn't be surprised if it had been done before. I wouldn't mind any feedback if you have suggestions or critique for how this might (or might not) work in play, even though I'm not currently working on a narrative game.

If anyone is working on a narrative game and this fits, feel free to use it.

[Daniel B]

Eerily familiar just means it's intuitive, and sometimes it takes a lot of deep thinking to uncover the intuitive X-)


Very nice mechanic!!

Dan

[JoyWriter]

That is so smooth! It fits with a lot of what I have been trying to do with insuring that rolls always produce something and softening fictional blows. How would you deal with the danger that players get more off a "no but" than they do off of a yes? It seems like it must be more possible to interfere with the ands and the buts than the thing you are saying yes to. Perhaps this could be challenged and resolved with another roll?

That chain of rolls would almost remind me of "bringing down the pain", where you do not accept the surface compromise and go in deeper, I also like how a really contentious conflict could become more and more dramatic as people keep adding stuff.

This adds to my list of Otherkind, PIE, the Pool, reverse Pool, Shadows, (and two of mine) as good quick systems for almost freeform gaming!

Got a name for it yet? I'd call it "Yes but". Especially because I can imagine it in a welsh accent

[JoyWriter]

No wait, call it SNaC !

[jp_miller]

I think it's awesome.

Yes, but...!

Don't you think with this type of mechanic the resolution of conflict might be a lot broader? What I mean is, if the goal is to steal the map from the opposition then instead of the initiator saying, "I'm going to leap from my horse to yours." Which in itself does not say anything about the characters goals or conflict at hand, wouldn't the player say something like "I'm going to steal your map."?

So we are talking about resolving the whole challenge in one roll rather than a series of small tasks. You could of course break the conflict up and use a series of rolls for smaller tasks but why would the players do so?

Also, geez, I'm not sure whether I should get into this but.. As far as I understand it, narrative games aren't necessarily about storytelling or who has the power to narrate them, but rather they are about addressing a premise. So in gamism we kill the monster because we will get XP which will allow us to level up and get kewl powerz so we can kill bigger monsters, rinse and repeat. In narrativism we might kill the monster because it opposes our ethics (it's not right to eat humans), or because doing so will make our own character a monster etc..

[Vulpinoid]

It's an elegant system, and I might even comment on it in my blog.

Though I'd be interested to see who it handles things like varying skill levels and degrees of difficulty.

The first couple of ideas that I've had in this regard really blow apart the elegance, leaving something just as ugly and crunchy as many of the other systems out there.

Still, it looks like the kernel of a decent system.

V

[Abkajud]

Interesting point, jp, but the Creative Agenda resides in the players and the act of play, not the rules themselves. Rules that deal with control of the narrative will support Story Now play, but don't preclude another CA on the part of the players, per se.
The really important part you mentioned, though, is task resolution vs. conflict resolution - mj's example wasn't perfect, but I suppose as long as the goal really did involve taking the horse, it works. You know, if that was, um, how you were going to keep the bad guy from, uh, getting back to the village? Seriously, that's a really important distinction to make, and everybody should know it!
I think the scale of the conflict is variable, and up to the game group - depending on your CA, you might not want to push things to a bigger scale. Personally, I think it would feel weird to roll for the events of an entire scene, and then talk it all through.

[mjbauer]

mj's example wasn't perfect

Yeah, my example was more on the task resolution end of the spectrum. I have a hard time thinking in terms of conflict resolution still, so I used an example I was more familiar with.

It could have just as easily been: "I'm going to get the map from you." And then the roll would have dictated the entire outcome of the scene rather than one detail of the engagement. 

[mjbauer]

Though I'd be interested to see who it handles things like varying skill levels and degrees of difficulty.

I hadn't really pushed it much further than face value. As it is in the system currently, every person is equally skilled and every task is similarly difficult, which doesn't really lend itself to realism.

I think that if I did include a character's skill as a variable it would be a matter of rolling a certain number of dice, equal to a character's ability and comparing successes vs a difficulty rating. However, that doesn't address opposed rolls, which complicates things because, part of the fun of the system lies in the success/success scenario, which couldn't happen in the case of an opposed roll. I'm not really sure how to resolve that in a simple way.

Did you come up with the same solution/problem?

[Selene Tan]

I think that if I did include a character's skill as a variable it would be a matter of rolling a certain number of dice, equal to a character's ability and comparing successes vs a difficulty rating. However, that doesn't address opposed rolls, which complicates things because, part of the fun of the system lies in the success/success scenario, which couldn't happen in the case of an opposed roll. I'm not really sure how to resolve that in a simple way.

Did you come up with the same solution/problem?

In your system, the initiator's roll determines the success or failure of the action, independent of the opposition's result. The opposition's roll determines whether s/he gets to make things worse for the initiator, independent of the initiator's result. So to factor in character skill, make skill level change the threshold of success for that character. Difficulty of the attempted action could also affect the threshold of success, e.g. a character with a high skill attempting an easy action would be likely to succeed.

Your system reminds me a little of the system in Shock: Social Science Fiction. Rolls are always between a Protagonist player and their Antagonist player, with each choosing an independent Intent for the roll. ("Independent" meaning that the intents can't cancel each other out -- it must be possible for both to succeed or both to fail.) The two players have a certain number of dice they can roll in the conflict, and can choose a mixture of d4s and d10s to make up the pool. The d10s help the player succeed at his/her Intent, and d4s interfere with the opponent's Intent. You could do something similar to introduce a little more adversity into your system.

[JoyWriter]

One of the features of such a system is that it can do opposed rolls really easily, which is nice as it means that you can use simple mechanics like roll-under. I'd go with that, possibly adding re-rolls or forcing players to sum more dice when trying to get under the roll. All kinds of stuff.

Actually that idea gives me a brainwave for a relationship mechanic: If your character opens up to another, they can give them a dice in conflicts, but they can then choose if you must add it or not. Actually, that's more complex than I intended, to put it another way you roll a dice for every character you are willing to involve in your action, and then the controlling players pick "choose or add", which decides how many of those dice you must add together.

But there are all kinds of things to attach such a resolution system to, from character power, to player interest/gift dice, to setting use, to monologue constraints taken (although that produces weird results in this case), to whatever else I can't think of. But in doing so you obviously bias the system towards different usual results:

At high success probabilities, the result is usually yes but, and at low probabilities it is no but, this suggests that using a traditional advancement procedure it will shift from being forgiving but ineffective, perhaps even with a strong emphasis on not putting your goal in your "main objective", but tacking it on as an "and" which I find a bit weird, to not being able to stop anything anyone wants to do, but being able to add extra results.
In both cases my "roll again if you challenge the additions" seems to work, because of how it fades out when success is likely, but acts as a balance at low skill. But can you imagine a game played out that way?

Player A:"He dives through the window onto his horse" - challenged, A and B win.
Player B:"He dives through the window, and hits into the horse with such force that it falls over." - challenged, A and B loose.
Player B:"He hits into the horse which is shot by someone on a far rooftop" - Challenged B looses A wins
Player A:"He lands smoothly on the horse's back and shocks it into a gallop" - Challenged  etc

How many proliferations could you keep track of? Is he now riding a zombie horse? I know I could potentially get very confused if that happened enough! To an extent this is not that different from "I kill him" "You miss", but the recursion turns it into something new. Especially as challenge is encouraged as a way to get monologue power back! Hmm, needs some work there...

[JoyWriter]

And by proliferations, I mean bifurcations, you know, as the tree of possibilities expands.